Christmas Decorations

I have just made these 2 decorations for swapping with others in the Designing Women group at our last meeting for the year. Both were made up as I went along. The hexagonal paper and beads decoration was made by painting one side of several red card hexagons with gold paint. Then I made a template hexagon for the placement of the holes for stringing with the beads. I pieced the holes by using an awl and with a protective mat on the table.

The star was made by nipping off the sharp ends of 5 satay sticks and holding them temporarily together in an over/under/over fashion with sticky tape while I tied the points. Then I tied several strands to make a pattern and make it more secure. I made sure I tied all ends at the points of the star so that I got a fluffy effect at each point. Once I had a pattern of threads I twisted a few extra strands around them to make them thicker. I twisted a few strands of gold thread around all the threads and the sticks, and last of all I tied some extra strands at the points to make them "fluffier". I quite like the subtle, almost natural look of this one. Painting the sticks first and using red thread with gold highlights would work well too I think.

This is what happens...

When I can't sleep! My mind goes round and round thinking about HOW to make something. We have a Christmas decoration swap coming up. I'm trying to use these decorations as an opportunity to try techniques I've heard about but never done. I've seen beads made by wrapping fabric/yarn scraps around lengths of drinking straw. I thought they might look good as a 3-D decoration but wanted to be sure I could actually construct it before I made heaps of beads. So at 3am I got out of bed, cut up some drinking straws into 2.5cm and 5cm lengths and created these by threading yarn through. I found I needed a doll needle for the longer straws and that I needed to go through the beads several times in different directions to get a good tension throughout. I think these have definite potential so now I need to make the beads themselves.